


I will never turn out like him (behind my back I already am)

by immoral_crow



Series: Inception Bingo Fills [5]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Inception Bingo, M/M, Multiple Eames, Multiple Partners
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 16:06:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7647637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/immoral_crow/pseuds/immoral_crow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The door of Arthur’s bedroom is ajar, and there is the soft, warm light of a bedside lamp through the gap and Eames… well. He can resist anything except temptation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I will never turn out like him (behind my back I already am)

**Author's Note:**

> For the multiple partners prompt on my bingo square. My thanks again to Trojie for the handholding and support. 
> 
> This follows the story laid out in the other parts of the series, but I think stands alone as well.

Living with Arthur is easier than Eames expected. 

Not that he’d thought of it much, of course, but if he had… if the thought had ever crossed his mind on those nights when unassisted sleep was an impossibility, then this is not how he would have imagined it. 

For a start, Arthur at home is far more unceremonious than Eames would have thought. 

He toes his shoes off as he walks through the front door, kicking them under the fancypants table that he keeps in the hallway, a pile of post resting on it. 

“Housekeeper,” he says when he catches the look on Eames’s face. “She comes in twice a week, even when I’m away.”

“Smart,” Eames says, struggling out of his own shoes and pushing them under the table, next to where Arthur’s have fallen. “Keeps the place look lived in if anyone’s got it under surveillance.” 

“I guess.” Arthur sounds non-committal. “Mostly it’s so I don’t come home to a mess and have to find a new cleaner.” 

“You’re not worried about anyone finding you?” Eames asks, slightly surprised and not bothering to hide it.

“Why would I be?” Arthur raises an eyebrow. “You’ve not found it, and you’ve been looking for years.” 

“Point.” Eames picks up a book that’s lying on the coffee table, flicks though the first few pages and puts it back down. “So, what now?”

Arthur looks at him, looks like he’s at a loss for the first time since Eames has known him, and shrugs.

“Pizza?” he says, and Eames sighs because _this_ he always suspected. 

“You got any groceries in?” he asks and scowls when Arthur shakes his head. “It’d better be pizza then.”

It’s less awkward than it should be. When they phone in the order for pizza. When Arthur leads Eames to the spare room and fetches him a towel. 

The whole time Eames feels that he should be fighting this, but each step, each stage is so small that it’s addictively easy to let his steps match Arthur’s, to follow as he leads, like this is some kind of dance. 

It helps that Arthur leaves Eames alone, ostensibly to unpack, but Eames just shoves everything out of his bag and into the top drawer of the dresser, then sinks down onto the bed, his hands over his face, trying desperately to catch his breath. 

He’s not sure that he actually manages to think at all, but a blessedly blank space of time happens until Arthur knocks at the bedroom door. 

“Pizza’s here,” he says, and Eames pulls himself together enough to nod and climb off the bed, because there’s emotional turmoil and then there’s real American pizza. 

Arthur hands him a beer without asking when he sits down, and he doesn’t – to Eames’s eternal and unmeasurable relief – insist on using plates. He does pull sheets off a kitchen roll though, passes those to Eames before he takes his first slice, but he doesn’t watch what Eames does with them, doesn’t seem to care, not when he has his own slice, his own beer, when he’s trying to find something worth watching on the TV. 

It’s peaceful – possibly the most peaceful night that Eames has spent in a long while – and by the time he heads to bed, something profoundly deep inside him has relaxed infinitesimally. 

All of which doesn’t mean he can sleep that night. Or at least, he falls asleep, but by 3am he’s staring at the ceiling, his heart beating in his chest like it’s trying to escape. 

It’s been years since this happened (since Kabul. Since before dreamshare stole his dreams) but you don’t forget the drill. 

He stays still, forcing his breathing to calm, reminding the demons that are clawing at his mind that he’s _safe_ – at least for the moment. And eventually the initial rush of adrenaline passes and it’s only then he sits up, shrugs off his sweat-soaked t-shirt and goes to find a cup of tea. 

That’s all he means to do – but the door of Arthur’s bedroom is ajar, and there is the soft, warm light of a bedside lamp through the gap and Eames… well. He can resist anything except temptation. 

He pushes the door open, as silently as he can, and is wholly unsurprised to see Arthur laid out on the bed, his suit intact, his cuffs rolled up to expose the strong, white lines of his arms, the needle of the cannula horribly visible in this position. 

Eames knows himself; knows the man he wants to be – knows the man he is.

He lies down on the floor next to the bed and reaches for the second IV line. _It’s not a breach of trust_ , he thinks as he slides the needle home and waits the few beats for the PASIV to do it’s work. _It’s not_. 

The first thing that shocks him is that he opens his eyes to his own flat in Dusseldorf. He didn’t know that Arthur had been there – didn’t even know that Arthur was aware of its existence. 

It’s the house that Eames thought was furthest off the grid – and thus the house in which he spends most of his down time. But Arthur has it spot on – from Eames’s own artwork on the walls, to the cracked yellow tiles around the kitchen sink that he can’t bear to replace because he’s never found tiles with that colour, that lustre to replace them. 

The second thing is the voices he can hear drifting in from the living room. 

There’s always a moment of disconnect when you hear your voice as it sounds to outsiders – on a recording or a film, or, as Eames is discovering now, when there seems to be more than one of you. He slips his shoes off and pads across the kitchen floor silently, stopping just outside the door to the living room, hidden by the shadows of the hallway. 

“I never expected it to be this hard,” Arthur is saying, and Eames bites his lip, because he can’t lie to himself – not about this. Staying to listen clearly is a breach of trust. 

“But you never expected it to be easy, though,” the other voice says, and it’s higher pitched, less resonant than the voice Eames hears when he speaks, but it’s still as familiar as the sound of his own heartbeat, and it makes him hesitate. “I didn’t marry a stupid man, darling.”

“I know.” Arthur sounds rueful. “But I thought loving you would be enough.”

“And then?”

“Then I woke up, and I missed you – I miss you – like a fucking missing limb. Except I turned around and there you were.”

There’s the sound of a soft laugh. 

“No,” the other Eames – Arthur’s husband – says. “No. I really wasn’t.” 

“Exactly. Arthur sounds tired. “He’s nothing like you. He’s just himself, but…”

“But you fell in love anyway?”

Eames would give anything to see Arthur’s face at that, but he can’t. Not from here. 

“How could I help it?” Arthur says at last. “He’s himself in all the ways you are yourself.” He sighs. “You weren’t there, and he was, and I missed you so much.” 

“And that’s all?” There’s an edge to Arthur’s husband’s voice that Eames recognises as real anger, as danger, and the sound of movement as he stands up, moves around the room until Eames can actually see him, his back to the door. “That’s all he means to you?”

“No,” Arthur says, and it sounds like the confession is being wrung out of him. “It was always him, before you even. But you…” He gets up too, comes to stand in front of his husband, and Eames takes a quick step back into the deeper shadows. “You showed me what I could be having, what I was missing, and when I got back…” He shrugs. “It was like all the protections I’d had before were gone.” He touches his husband’s face. “I had an Eames shaped hole in my defences and…”

“He walked right in,” Arthur’s husband says. “Of course he did. It’s what we do best.” 

Arthur takes a step closer, moving into the circle of his husband’s arms, resting their foreheads together. 

“I know he’s not you. I don’t expect him to be you. But you’re gone, and…” He looks up, and Eames looks away, not willing to witness this. 

“I would never want you to be unhappy forever,” Arthur’s husband says, and when he speaks again Eames can hear the smile, the teasing in his tone. “For a while, maybe. But not forever.”

“Idiot.” Arthur’s voice sounds impossibly fond. “Like anyone would ever replace you.” 

“The human heart is amazing, love. It has space for more than one person.”

“Even when both those people are an Eames?”

“Especially then.” He tightens his arms around Arthur. “We’ll fit together like jigsaw pieces.”

There’s a heavy moment of silence and the Arthur snorts. “If you make one gang bang joke, I swear…”

“That,” the other Eames says with a heavy tone of affronted dignity. “Was the very last thing on my mind.”

Eames, who would place a substantial wager on the fact that they had been thinking the same thing, smiles at the lie and slips, as quietly as he can back into the kitchen. 

Shooting himself out of the dream is not an option here, but the kitchen window opens out onto a four storey drop to the carpark, and Eames indulges in practicing some of the dive positions he remembers from school as he falls. 

Later on Arthur finds him on the sofa, his cup of tea still only half finished. 

“You’re not a substitute,” he says, and Eames believes him. 

“I know.” He looks from Arthur to his tea, then back again. “I guess it’s just hard when the man you love is still in love with his ex though.” 

He says it baldly, keeps his voice calm, even though he knows that Arthur understands what the words are costing him. 

Arthur sits down, puts his feet up on the coffee table. 

“People can love multiple partners,” he says, “and have those relationships remain separate.”

“People can,” Eames agrees, affably as he can. “Can you?” 

He’s sure he knows the answer, even before Arthur bites his lip. 

“I don’t know,” Arthur says at last, and Eames fights to keep breathing around the sudden tight feeling in his chest. “I guess the only thing we can do is to find out, isn't it?” 

His expression is ridiculously open, and Eames can’t help but read the hope there, the longing… the sadness, before he looks away. 

“Agreed,” he says, putting the mug down on the table and standing up. “But not yet.” 

Arthur raises an eyebrow and Eames shrugs at him, cursing his own ridiculous impulses. 

“You haven’t let him go,” he says. “Not yet.”

“And that’s a problem because?”

“Because no matter how good your intentions, anything you start with me now will be…” He pauses, looks at Arthur, trying to find the word. “Messy.” 

It’s a stupid word, but Arthur looks away and nods. Eames sees the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallows.

“I’m not saying forever,” he says, wishing he hadn’t even said this much. “Just…” He steps forward, into the cramped space between Arthur’s legs and the coffee table. 

“Come find me when you’re done mourning,” he says and gives into temptation, kisses Arthur’s forehead before he steps away. “I’ll be waiting for you.”


End file.
